Friday, April 27, 2012

How do I put this, throughout my life I have consistently been left unassisted. What I mean by this is that often when I was learning to do something -even when I was part of a group or class- where more experienced people or teachers would rush to help someone, it was never me. It was something I started to notice more as I got older because it appeared in social situations and made me feel less loved rather than more advanced. When I mentioned it to a friend once we were playing pool and someone stepped in to help her learn to line up her shots. I think I said something like, "Why don't you help me?" And they said, "Well, you don't seem to need help." Which confounded me as I didn't feel I was performing any better than she was. Best I can figure is this came from becoming very independent early on. When you know you're not going to get any help, you don't expect it and therefor don't appear to "need" it. I've noticed it time and again and to be honest I've grown so accustomed to not getting this special attention that when I do get it it makes me feel kind of nervous and my performance suffers. I even noticed it a number of times in the past year with beauty school: there were teachers who never interfered with my work or questioned what I was doing which kind of made me feel that I was getting the attention I maybe should have been and there were teachers who wanted to supervise me and interject with nearly ever step I took in a process which made me feel underestimated and anxious.
So I just came across an article via some site I've already forgotten which wrote their short article based on this one in Time which talks about how much better it is to learn something on your own, especially if you find yourself struggling with it at first. This is fascinating as when I was in those situations where someone else was being given instruction, it was always the same person or people who would be aided in every new situation. I never thought of any of them as dunces but they seemed always to get this attention and I'm thinking now, that ultimately, they were set up to become not-as-good at learning things. I've always appreciated my independence, even though I do think it's caused me to miss out on some things -especially socially. But now I'm actually really glad to have cultivated it so early on as I have always felt that given the opportunity I could learn just about anything and struggling doesn't ever seem to discourage me quite enough to make me give up.